


The Die-Away

by Dratz



Series: Re:Connected [3]
Category: Zoids
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 16:18:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13414998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dratz/pseuds/Dratz
Summary: The connection between Burton and Omega grows stronger as the Seismosaurus gathers strength in a new, underground refuge. But with returning power comes increasing impatience, and a yearning to come out of hiding.





	The Die-Away

He had to learn the new caverns, by touch, by smell, by the depth of the dark that surrounded him on all sides and grabbed at his breath and his hair. Sometimes the rain-water came through, resembling tears, and would stain all the lines in his hands while he felt his way down the long, snaking corridors, slowly, step by step, and farther into intimate madness. New scars now, rusted canyons spelling things on his body, twice he had tripped over slippery stones that sliced him open, for he was fragile. His face foreboding and creased along the sides of his lip, always tired–so, _so_ tired, and shaped like the stars, flawed and graceful. And this, the abyss, the underground plane… was a place for gods and fiends and secrets buried long ago in the gut of the great dormant mountain.

Burton went carefully, the earth about him and incredibly old, always leaning against him, whipping him with dust, whispering… he heard words from dead languages and others he could not understand. But he listened. He would stop sometimes and press his head to the wall, where the water ran within, and followed it steadily. Sometimes, it pooled on the floor, and when he found it with his feet, most often by accident, the cold caught him by surprise, struck like lightning. And sometimes, it would spit down upon him from the ceiling and leave small spots of dirt on his cheeks. He learned to stay to the sides of the tunnel, where the smell of it was strongest, and the stones uneven.

To-day, he felt the Seismos reach out to him before he had entered the deepest of the caverns, checking his thoughts and enigmas and identity. At last, zer voice echoed over him and drew him closer, “... Jed.”

“I’m here,” said Burton reassuringly, and he turned the final few corners while Omega went pressing around in his mind, reading this, deciphering that, much more conscious this time, not so much prying as inquiring. He could see the faint glow now of the Zoid’s massive eyes, which lit the junction and the whole hollow in a mysterious, unnatural green. Numerous columns of limestone guarded the terminal there with unsound might, surrounding a series of subterranean lakes, knee-height to several meters in depth.

Omega was waiting at the forefront, zer head tilted to one side and sweeping out over some impossible length, much larger than before. Burton brushed at zer bottom jaw with the tips of his fingers, the surface unyielding, even, and sturdy. Black. Black as the inescapable abyss of bad dreams.

Omega rose; ze lifted zer head high, to the very top of the ceiling, where strings of stalactites hung in the shape of blunted spears, and then bellowed out with a sound from zer throat that faded just as slowly as it came. Long pauses, a dip in the pitch that seemed impossible. Then the same cry rang through the whole of the place, from the walls, from the dark outreaches and craters in the rock. It bounced over and back, layer upon layer of some softening noise til it rushed to a rhythm of rivers and wind.

“The cave sings,” ze said.

Burton nodded quietly and began the walk toward the center of the cavern, and where Omega had planted all four of zer great, solid feet.

“Do the forests sing?” asked the Seismos. “Do the oceans sing?”

“Yes,” said Burton. “If you are willing to listen.” He went on inspecting the joints and under-armor. The condition was improving, though far from complete. There were cracks outlining quite a few of the panels, and many sections still missing that would have to be coded all over again. Some of the old gun barrels and bolts had been shed and stayed rusting over now beneath the surface of the largest pool.

A quick glance suggested that across zer shoulders and thighs, the scars were fading, armor dusted over with beads of stone-colored water. A steady process, tiring and time-consuming, though Omega kept at it tenaciously, snarling sometimes, and weaving zer neck round to study all the shapes of zer colossal, anchored body. 

Burton made his way back towards the center of the cave, where the water trickled faster and smacked him sometimes on the cheek, squinting up at the god with a rare kind of twist to his lips. He knew the Seismos was processing something–what, exactly, he couldn’t be sure, because their link wasn’t nearly strong enough to tell, and all he could hear were bits and pieces, static and the rudimentary formation of pictures to words while ze cataloged their meaning. Then ze stretched out zer throat like the trunk of a tree, and the clash of metal plating vibrated far and wide, shook the blood in Burton’s chest. He clutched at his collarbone as if to counter it momentarily, but soon enough the tremors were gone, an empty space, boundless and idle, cleaved deep inside him.

He supposed this was Omega’s way of expressing how ze felt–confined to the curse of pure and utter darkness.

“I want to see the world as you do,” ze said finally, settling into place. I” am trapped here. You say it is not safe on the Surface.”

“Well, it isn’t,” Burton replied, still a little short of breath. “Not yet.”

Omega crooned, a sound as profound and abstract as the earth and blackness which enveloped them. The joints in zer lengthened neck rattled, the sound shattering like ice against stone and tremendously heavy. “... When will I see it again?”

“In time,” said Burton quietly, and crossed his arms about himself. The cavern sodden, licking his skin with a merciless cold. The god shuddered at his answer.

“-I wish I could say soon,” Burton went on, still under his breath, his head bent back and staring up- up- scaling the test of space and shadow to the polished jewels of Omega’s slanted eyes. “But I’ve told you before-”

“It will never be safe for me,” ze interrupted, one thousand ripples through the dusted surface of the water, breaking rules and chains of calm. “So long as your wretched species walks the Surface. You tread poison. You spit poison. You kill and create things that you cannot control.” 

The jaws slammed shut, a crippling vice so high up, and Omega rocked in place, sluggish at first, and then faster with each sway, until ze writhed and tossed zer tail with frightening power to the faraway wall. “Your kind... you dreamed me—made me. You will not stop... you cannot rust, not like your old, core-less machines.” The pounding of a joint against badly dented armor. “So when, Jed?”

Burton bowed before zem, motionless for a while, the blood in his ears weighted, stinging. “I’m not sure.” Glanced up, somewhat bitter, a sour note between his teeth, partial annoyance, partial empathy. “Perhaps you’re right- it will never be safe. Though you could learn to be a bit more patient; I’m not done _investigating_ , after all. And isn’t that what you wanted from me?”

“How _dare_ you.” Omega pounded at the floor in unpronounceable rage and building might, zer voice fierce- the signal in his head was insufferable and shrill. Ze lifted zer garrisoned shoulders and stepped forward, almost as if to flatten him, but then broke away into a sudden semblance of vibration and light, showering Burton in dust, encircling the pools and his shadow with a second appearance, this variable in size and phasing, spreading, shrinking, faster than the eye could catch.

The very first time Omega had managed to recreate it- this phantasmal extension of zerself- was right after zer fall at the Harbor. Burton hadn’t seen it then–wasn’t sure if anyone had–but he identified the feat in mere fragments of zer consciousness, memories, that the Seismos tried transmitting to him. This several encounters ago, when ze lay crippled and caged in the subterranean tunnels, and calling out to him monotonously. Linking up, breaking contact unintentionally, and shaken from such lacerations that could have very well severed zer body… but the message had been sent. And in the vision, ze took a different form, not unlike the descriptions Burton had read in all his research for Alpha of the Organoids when they began bonding to Zoid cores–something akin to a streak of light, unstable, serpentine, and forced zer way underground. 

Burton called it Casting, and Omega would attempt it within the cave, for split seconds at a time, flashing about like a spark from a wire, swooping, diving, down the length of the rock-hardened walls. Sometimes ze stopped near Burton’s shoulders, or the surface of the scented water, weightless, zer face sharp slanted, a mess of immortal angles, flickering, changing, to mimic almost human expressions… all lost partially in the blaze of sudden, silvery light. 

And this is precisely what ze did, darting around the hollow and tossing out a spectrum of color, giant waves that washed through the darkness, scouted out the cracks in the corners… clubbing at Burton with currents that rose like envy and fire, burning, dancing, launching crude shapes. Telling a story. Ze circled him, humming something he couldn’t recognize–an imagined language, whipping crude sketches made of white bands of light. The lines would seize him, and spin him around, then dissipate, the volume of Omega’s chants causing Lollygag to stir. But he’d been asked not to intervene with these sessions, not unless the circumstances were absolutely dire…

“I _want_ to go to the Surface. And walk again—see sunlight.” The Seismos murmured in fragments, half in his head, half aloud, throwing tantrums off the cavern walls. And great domes of crumbling colors. “To hear the oceans and the forests sing, Jed. I want to live. I want to _live..._ ” And then ze shot away,  reverted to zer usual state, crying on and slamming at the floor of the cave, thousands of tons trying to compete against the press of time and the price of self-control. Detonating pockets of dust with each blow, snapping fangs, grinding gears, fighting off the ache in zer joints that flared in protest to zer own explosive screams, trying to rip apart the reigning sheet of darkness. The sound was terrible, and shrill, and so deafening that the walls seemed to tumble, inch by inch, and the water recede to escape it, and the whole floor rocked from side to side.

“That _hurts_ ,” Burton said between gritted teeth and a shiver.

And Omega moaned in retort with the might of a fog horn, even louder than before, zer eyes ablaze and focused directly down on him. Trying to dissect him, direct him. “You know _nothing_ of my _pain_.” And then there was a surge through his mind across their connection, a memory of blistering fire and failing vitals and the desperate surrender to hatred and fear; Burton staggered back, gasping for air, voice taken, body compromised. Some boiling impression, like metal melting, losing form and strength, spreading far beneath his skin and seizing the bridges between flesh and bone, the channels in his throat closing in. Submitting to panic, to the throbbing fever at his temple now and the sensation of hot magma being poured through his veins, a frantic pounding in his ears like fluid being spilled. His fingers frozen, his mind caught in a fruitless and fitful struggle to maintain consciousness while he felt his knees collapse. Omega kept at it until he sat clutching at his heart and trapped completely in the battle of life and death ze had fought at the Harbor. This was zer story, zer means to share, to describe, but the process was brutal, and Burton so ill by now that ze risked inflicting permanent damage.

Steadily, the Seismos pressed zer chin to his cheek, and the burning ceased, the pain ebbed away in great receding waves. Burton could see, could speak again, stood slowly, his feet shifting about the floor of the cavern in an attempt to find his place, his center of balance. The awful taints of Omega’s rage vanished as quickly as they’d come, left him trembling like an aftershock and reaching for his heart in the dark.

Lollygag whispered softly for him, on their own separate link in his mind, _‘Jed?’_

_'I’m fine.’_ Burton was at-ease again, for the Gale was always there, always with him, always aware. _‘It’s alright, Lollygag.’_ His pulse was leveling out now, his lips dry and parted. So the dragon was appeased. 

He looked up at Omega with his steady, grey eyes, two dim stars in the pitch blackness with a crescent-shaped slit of his teeth. “You’re right, and I never will–not entirely. As you’ll never know mine. But that’s the curious thing: it doesn’t stop us from feeling altogether now, does it?” A slight pause, as he backed away toward the tunnels and the long trek up to the surface. “For ourselves–“

The god made a stifled, moaning sound and something made of metal scraped against the wall, slow and unintentional. 

Burton sighed, “–or for another.” The words were forced out, laced with something like regret and sorrow, as if he didn’t want to care, or accept it, and he remembered the different faces of the children before they made their way into the Coliseum, side-by-side always, and ready to step forth into combat. But Savage Hammer was no more, and he was tired, fed up with the fighting, keeping back a veil of tears in memory of those better days, because he knew he was their enemy now.

There was a dead space within him… inevitable, impeding. “Think on it,” his voice soft, and skeptical, while he shoved against the visions in his head, for he knew Omega would be intercepting everything. And then go prying once again.

So he began to back away to the tunnels again, wounded gravely on the inside and wondering if he should burn those old photos from several years back of the Team. He kept them hidden in an old album and shoved inside a drawer where sometimes he hoped he wouldn’t remember–but in his daydreams, in deep nightmares, he _had_ to, both the bliss and the bad, and how everything had crumbled around him.

“Stay.” Not so much a command as a request. The Seismosaurus seemed to mimic his movements and stepped after him, each foot against the earth with surprising precision.

Burton sat down, slow, steady as he could manage on the still-quaking floor, pulse persisting, and crossed his legs. He reached up only to tidy his hair. 

“You, too, are in pain.” Omega moved to encircle him, as if grasping an epiphany between zer armored jaws. The metal plates, entire islands on their own, rattled against the ancient stone, zer neck mere inches from the ground and creating a segmented wall. Then ze reared zer head up above.

Burton eyed zem carefully and gave a bitter, reluctant reply, “Yes.” But they all were. The world was cruel, and the people in it even crueler, hiding out in the cities making up their own means to control. 

The Seismosaurus settled beside him, the floodlight from zer great eyes growing in intensity, and falling down the cracks through the rock. Ze lowered zer snout to him gradually.

“And you've hurt the people you love.”

He wouldn’t answer that, though they both already knew. Burton looked away from the Zoid and choked down air, half-convinced he didn’t deserve another breath. _Curse_ his wretched betrayal. The mess that he’d made. Of course, he’d his reasons… the restrictions, complications, but never _excuses_. It was hard to swallow, even harder to live with. Omega had said it so bluntly that he winced and curled his fingers into fists, nails deep in his own dirt-brushed flesh. 

The god seemed to sense the strain and hummed quietly, a song ze had studied from Burton’s mind, and sought to recreate in celestial pitches. Mighty, and low, the subtle pull of an undertow, valley streams, falling water… Around them, the cave sang in mysterious ways, the echos returning ever stronger.

And earlier that month, Burton had scouted out a new hide away for the Seismosaurus, deep-earth caverns underneath the Erca Forest mountain chains. And it was for brief moments that ze had Cast zerself into the air from beneath the Harbor, and relocated–faster than lightning, just a blazing streak within the wind–to this new refuge hidden far from any busy city. And the hollows here were vast, carved from old age and water that had worked its way down from the surface, ever patient, ever reshaping the place, bit by bit. There was room for zem to move, at least, and to stretch zer awesome limbs, bend the joints so that they wouldn’t rust. And ze would stare into the mineral pools and at the shadows sprayed along every side of the ceiling, memorizing the shapes and all the different stains of black, and basins of the earthen floor. Now the caverns replied with the very same tune and cradled both their bodies in a vow of unbreakable darkness.

And ze murmured for a while longer, copying the notes with care best ze could, wiring memoirs into audio, and coiling zerself into the shape of a massive, metal shield. Then silence.

“I want to go to the Surface,” ze said again, like a child, yearning for the sky and the touch of cold rain. “My time will come. I will not be controlled. Nor contained. And _you_ Jed, you _will_ keep your promise.”

Burton could see nothing now but the small patch of deep-ground earth below him, and the colossal alloy plates of the god’s throat that caged him in a tight, narrow space, caught between zer teeth and the gun barrels lining zer body. “Of course.” He was mournful at best and loathing every moment of it. 

“You will heal,” said Omega, and grazed the very tip of zer chin against his forehead. “You need rest, peace—that is what you told me, when I was wounded. You too need time.” 

“I don’t _have_ time,” Burton stroked the Zoid’s muzzle with the tips of his fingers, his gaze unfocused and drifting about in the shadows. Something bitter in the way he spoke. 

The Seismos seemed to ignore that, with a clockwork kind of grunt. “Then stop _wasting_ it.”A slanted gnashing of the teeth. “You must sleep. For you are tired, and too focused on the past—and you cannot hope to change that.” 

Burton bit down on his lip, cut the urge to snap back at zem, a dull ache in his chest tried to pull him to the floor. For he already knew Omega was right, that there was no way to undo it all, but he that didn’t stop him from remembering. 

That’s what hurt most of all, like spilled blood and split lips, and dissolving his resilience the way water carves at solid stone–he’d a _place_ on the Team, he’d a role to play, a job to do. But those days were gone, his reputation ruined, cover broken. He was older. Wiser. Worse or better off he could never figure out, though the seasons went quickly just the same. He touched Omega’s bottom jaw again, a dead weight cemented down in his throat. Ze was still prying at him, unsure of his human emotions, keeping files, saving data. All sorts of messages to do with his mind... 

"You have told me that greed corrupts. That vengeance blinds.” The Seismos said.  “What of this 'love?'” 

“Love is stupid,” said Burton, bitterly. He was tired, ever so, so tired. And Omega sifted through the contents of his mind once more, his dreams, his thoughts, inconsiderately. 

"I was created by your people,” ze thundered, raising zer head like a new-born, darkened sun, “to kill. Not to love. I am a war machine. I am a _god_.” 

Burton, mortal, vulnerable, his skin dotted with dust and the light from Omega’s ruthless eyes, curled his lips up ever so slightly, the anger in him still very much alive, burning, rampant and ungainly. There were deep shadows on his face. 

“You have a choice.” His voice was grave–stern and quiet. “I have tried to tell you. But I cannot teach, if you refuse to listen.” 

“Talk, then.” 

“And listen well.” Burton’s eyes were carefully narrowed, his lips still for a moment–very dry. “I have told you before, I will say it again: you are free to do what you want now. You were programmed, yes, but those codes can be unwritten, deleted, redone–we have shown you this, Lolly and I, yes? But we can do no more for you–the rest you must decide on your own. You live, Omega–and you live as you choose. And you can kill, and you can love; that is up to you. You could set this world aflame, oh, for certain, but for what? Death, pain. Darkness. Haven’t you had enough of that?” 

“... I want to hear the forests sing.” 

“You will,” Burton’s reply was gentle and even. Omega grasped, across their makeshift connection, at his intangible threads of sorrow. “Be patient. Be patient with me.” 

Then the great Zoid moved zer head towards him, a singular, very sure motion, zer huge shoulders hunched, and zer jaws parted to show zer thick, bladed teeth. Mimicking a laugh–Burton’s laugh–in a hounding pulse of clashing alloy. 

“I make no promises.” 

Burton was content with that, and closed his eyes for a moment, darkness into darkness, his lids ever so heavy and easy to shut. Like windows. Windows facing out into an impossible realm of uneasy, motionless black. He had been a quiet child. A shy child. Who spoke three ways and followed stories through the pages of old, withered books with dirty fingernails. Who never knew how to greet the cruel strangers and starless nights on the street, staring into broken faces, broken bottles that broke into his ankles and toes and winked like jewels. Jewels crowned with dust and with blood. Worthless, uncut. Cutting him. Everywhere, the smell of death killing him softly. 

With rigid strain, the windows of his eyes reopened… 

Omega said something he couldn’t make out, the clatter and crush of armored plates on cogs and the cavern floor disorienting him. Ze was staring him in the eye, omniscient, all-seeing, his mind but a map for zem to read and navigate, every thought, every memory, every dream. 

"You have work to do,” ze said to him in his mind, over a strengthening connection. “Rest first.” 

Burton nodded slowly, powerless against zer continual probing. His knees beginning to fail him again, unable to hold his weight, hold the world where it was on his weak, mortal shoulders. Strength bleeding out into the hushed breath of blackened earth. 

With a fading whisper, he turned at once from that place, from the unblinking gaze of the great, mangled god, hidden deep below ground and making mountains out of wraith-like schemes. Omega said nothing more to him, his mind released, his body cold. Tired and tortured. His feet barely steady on the path to the surface, retracing old steps and feeling his way through the blinding darkness–blood, stone, a gradual ascent. He could not bare to look into the light at first and covered his eyes with both hands, weeping and biting down on the corners of his mouth. 

Lollygag came to him swiftly, shielding him from the harshness of the sun and ripping wind. “Omega is right,” he said, in his usual, kindly manner. “You must rest.” 

Burton looked up from the tear-stained vales of his palms, pressing his face to the dragon’s lowered snout. His voice was even, quiet, “Let’s be off, then.” He did not look back to the mountains that day, delirious with his lingering pain. The Gale helped him up in the the cockpit and then they were miles up above the ground, caught by clouds racing in from the sea and obscured from the tests of time around them. The light became bearable and Burton could at last open his eyes fully now, back and forth between dials on the dashboard and the wash of rain embracing them. Unsurpassed stillness, though the sky was never still. 

The air was silver and ancient. 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally posted on March 25, 2016 to [my RP blog](http://obsidianonslaught.tumblr.com/post/141670897943/the-die-away).


End file.
